Thrive Health gives patrons opportunity to pay it forward

A local business is using one of its products to encourage positive interactions in the community and promoting how people can be "good."

When customers walk into Thrive Health, a holistic health store on Highway 12 across from Kroger, they are met with a wall full of words promoting inclusiveness, all centered around the image of a bare winter tree and the word "Huvinity."

Stacked on shelves beneath the words are T-shirts and tank tops bearing the same central word and the picture of the tree. The Huvinity shirts are for sale at $25, but when a customer buys one, they are given a second for free to give to someone else in the community.

Co-owner Meagan O'Nan said the term "Huvinity" is the core of Thrive Health's beliefs. The word combines humanity and divinity, emphasizing the idea people are capable of great things.

"In April, I was chatting with one of my colleagues and we were talking about how there's not a lot of trust in the community in between people, right now," O'Nan said. "So I really put my mind to answering that question in a tangible way … How do we build trust in the community?"

O'Nan believes the answer is through conversation, positive interaction and real connection.

The intent is for the recipient of the free Huvinity shirt to be a stranger, and for the customer to go out of their own comfort zone to create a positive interaction they would otherwise not have experienced.

"We believe that what you believe in is what you will see," O'Nan said. "We are inundated with negative and bad so we're seeing more negative and bad. We are trying to put out a different message — a positive message."

The tree pictured on the shirt is from O'Nan's yard in West Point. It was taken during the winter, when the tree was bare.

"It's naked, it's vulnerable, it's exposed, so it's really symbolic for what we're trying to do in creating interactions," O'Nan said. "It shows a vulnerability and an openness to have an actual conversation."

For now, Thrive Health is selling T-shirts and tank tops, but in the fall it plans to sell sweatshirts, hoodies, baller jackets, and long-sleeved shirts.